Towing with 4xe

[samcf]

Just finished a 2,300 mile trip towing a 4,000 lb camper, figured I would share my experience.

The Jeep is a 2022 Rubicon with 7,000 miles. It has a 2" Mopar lift, 37" K02 tires, and factory 4.10 gears.

The trailer is 3,500 lbs dry, so probably over 4,000 loaded. It squats the Jeep a bit, but not an embarrassing amount. It does not bottom out, and rides very nice loaded. I added a Curt sway bar, but it really didn't need it. With the sway bar installed, I can set the cruise control at 70 mph and rarely get any wiggle. I drive 62-67 mph, anything over that and the trans searches gears a bit. It pulls hills at 65 mph with no drama or high reving. Most hills it pulls at 3,500-4,000 rpm. I had total confidence to pull into the fast lane and accelerate to 65 mph on hills. Very good power.

It will deplete the battery quickly towing, so we left in E-Save mode. Early in the trip we left it in Hybrid and the battery was dead before we noticed. The next 4 days it stayed on <1%, and we never recharged it. I was shocked that it had no issues towing and power was not affected... Almost. On the way home we lost power pulling a hill. It was 100 degrees, and I thought it had overheated. We topped the hill at 45 mph, and that was all it could muster. After going down the next hill, it went back to normal. I watched the temp gauges the rest of the day and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. After a long 5 mile uphill pull, it dropped power again. Same deal, topped the hill at 45 mph then back to normal after the downhill. When I was almost home, it occurred to me that the battery was dead. I know that seems obvious, but it had been towing at hwy speed for 1,500 miles with the battery below 1% and working perfectly. Just before we got home, we had to go over a pass. It's a good climb from 2,000ft to 4,000 ft in a few miles. I pulled up the guage that shows ICE and Electric power use. Starting the hill, electric use was high. After about 3 miles, power dropped off and the electric use guage dropped to zero. There's my answer, lol, the battery was dead.

It is absolutely mind blowing that the 4xe tows the way it does and maintains excellent power at sustained loads over it's tow rating. Even with a dead battery, it operates in hybrid mode for thousands of miles with almost no power drop-off. Average mpg for the 2,300 mile trip from North Idaho to San Francisco was 10.1 mpg.

My only complaint is that I can't lock it in E-Save mode. Jeep absolutely killed it with this powertrain. It is an absolute joy to drive loaded or unloaded.

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[WanderingGeo]

Isn’t the towing capacity 3500lbs for the 2024 Rubicon 4xe? That’s pretty good experience if you were over its rating. Nice setup.

 

[Steemax]

Nice writeup, do you have a brake controller for the trailer? I’d probably be terrified without one if going over the tow rating.

 

[samcf]

Yes, that is slightly over the tow rating. I did add a brake controller. The regen braking is excellent though and I never had to apply the brakes on hills to control the speed.

I have towed trailers my whole life. This setup is top 2 or 3 best driving setups I have towed.

 

[Dabrakeman]

When you say you can't lock it into E-Save do you just mean that you have to manually put it back into E-Save everytime you restart? I can't imagine a situation where it would pop out while driving but maybe yours is.

 

[samcf]

I mean we had to put it in E-Save after each stop... which is VERY frequent towing with the Jeep. I wish there was a way to lock it in E-Save or whatever mode you wanted it to stay in.

 

[bobzdar]

I had a similar experience with my 2024 Rubicon except with more like 4600lbs loaded with a wildwood travel trailer (4125lbs empty). Trip went from RIchmond, VA all the way to Montreal and back in the July heat wave, including through the VT and NH mountains, so will likely never encounter those conditions again in my ownership - this was a one time trip and my usual tow vehicle is a Defender 130 with 8200lbs rating. It did get hot on long hills - there was one hill on I90 in Mass. that went from 200' elevation to 1700' elevation in one straight shot and I had to gradually slow from 65mph to 55mph (speed limit was 65mph, trucks were doing more like 45mph) to not have the engine go over 240F - that's the temp that the temp gauge goes from half to 3/4. It was during the recent east coast heat wave, so pretty much worst case scenario I will ever encounter.

I made sure the battery had at least 20% and used e-save. If I started the day with less than 20%, I would put it in e-save charge until it got to that and then switch back to maintain. Towing the trailer it would regen pretty quickly. It would heavily leverage the electric power on hills and at times dropped from 20% to 4% (on that one hill on I90), but let me keep engine rpms lower which was better for heat. Going down the hill it would charge itself back up. I never lost engine power at any time.

I'm running a tekonsha brake controller with the 3014-p adapter that plugs directly in, works great, but with max regen it did not need the brakes at all on hills, only when coming to a stop or slowing for exits and the like. Trans temp never went over 200F, so the towing limitation is definitely cooling on the 4xe, otherwise it had zero issue towing 4500+lbs. I got around 9.5mpg towing, so had to stop about every 2.5 hours. I generally just run the speed limit, which is 70mph in some areas and mostly 55-65mph in others. I have towed the exact same camper with a 2020 Gladiator Rubicon with tow package (7000lbs rating) and overall, the 4xe was a better experience. Where I had to slow due to heat releated reasons on the 4xe, the Gladiator would slow down to 55-60mph at times just due to lack of power - but you could keep the throttle pinned and it wouldn't overheat. Stability wise I noticed no difference. Regen braking was an improvement for sure. Gladiator could go longer on a tank, but similar mpg.

For comparison, the Defender 130 p400+airstream setup in the pic got 12.5mpg and has a 22.5 gallon tank, when I had to stop to refuel the Jeep my wife would have more like 3/8 of a tank left. It never had to slow and has similar power (400hp). Both were running proper weight distribution hitches set up to have the trailer level and the front end at the same or slightly lower ride height than not towing - this left the Jeep with a little bit of lower rear ride height but perfectly stable towing in all conditions. The rover has air suspension so is always level which makes setting the hitch up a little difficult but ends up with a very nice towing setup. The airstream is 5600lbs empty and probably running 6500lbs loaded as most camping equipment was in that and not the WIldwood to keep it light. It's a lot more aerodynamic as it rides lower, hence the much higher mpg. If you had a more aerodynamic trailer, the 4xe likely would never have heat issues as evidenced by just slowing down a bit keeping it cool. I don't think I'd try towing the airstream with it unless in a pinch and a short distance as I'd be more worried about the weight being well over 5000lbs.

 

[Phantom01231]

I just pulled a 5x8 U-Haul trailer with a several hundred point piano in it about 1300 miles. At one point I forgot that I was even pulling it and when I looked in the mirror I was wondering why the guy in the U-Haul was so far up my ass

 

[johnparjr]

why not just leave it in Hybrid mode ?

 

[us3r1d]

why not just leave it in Hybrid mode ?

Because hybrid mode very heavily prefers electric drive, which will leave you with a depletedHV battery very quickly. Once the HV battery is depleted, you stop getting any boost from the electric motors and end up dropping speed on hills.

If you manage when you use the electricity yourself, you'll have a much more efficient/effective driving experience.

 

[sbandit]

watching thread, I have a 2024 rubicon 4xe and towed an empty Cargo trailer 5x10 from Maine to Massachusetts. Wasn't exactly great as I left with a full tank of fuel and full 98% charge and didn't even make it home and had to pull over to get fuel. Gauge in cluster said I got 10.3MPG but based on the Gas station location I made it a total of 132 miles and had to fill up 15.1 gallons.

It was a windy day so driving a box with a Parachutte behind it didn't make me think I'd get very far. Calculating the distance travel vs refuel actual I got an amazing 8.74mpg.

I plan to do the same trip again this weekend or next so we will see if I get anything different.

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